Attitudes to animal welfare and rights throughout the world in the modern era: a review

Abstract

Animal rights and animal welfare issues are topical issues, with many people across the world expressing concern about the major welfare problems of animals. These problems are generally based on people attitudes that affect the animals' life. It is therefore important to learn about people's attitudes towards animal issues. We investigated society's opinions about the animals in a series of cross-cultural surveys. People who live in developed countries generally display more concern to animals than others, which appears due to their economic circumstances and ability to support high welfare systems. However, there is a common belief across societies that farm animal welfare should be maintained, and that we should support animal friendly rearing systems which at least ensure minimum standards of animal welfare. But, because of the high cost of animal friendly products many people are unable to consume these products. Besides, vegetarianism has been becoming more mainstream in many parts of the developed world over the last half century. Animal welfare concern is one of the important causes for avoiding animal products, especially meat. Most people support animal experimentation if these will be beneficial to human and animal lives. Gender is an important demographic determining factor, with females being generally more sympathetic to animals than males. Furthermore, large sized animals are generally accepted as more sentience animals. It is concluded that benign attitudes to animals are becoming more mainstream, particularly in relation to animals reared for meat